Nuclear Renaissance or The End of Nations ?

The Internet is a vast rumour mill and Internet-thinking can lead to paranoia and selfdelusion.
This has infected the so-called "Nuclear debate" just like the Climate debate, the
Peak oil debate, the Environment debate and other mix-and-muddle mass readership
themes generated by political and corporate elites, put through the rumour mill, and
sterilized.

Due to this, the real dimensions of the nuclear challenge - extending right up to removing
all remaining credibility from the notion of "the nation state" - has been sidelined and lost in
a maze of lesser conspiracy theories, like the long-running or nearly endless saga of the
Iran nuclear affair. To tweak up the hysteria level every few months, we have Bomb Iran
calls, tacky histrionics and tinsel debate, but the threat of nation states simply being no
longer defensible because of current civil nuclear proliferation and the massive plans and
programs to build new civil reactors, almost everywhere, never gets airtime.

Impassioned calls for Iran bombing are presented as the quick fix solution to nuclear
weapons proliferation. In Iran's case, this would be a Doomsday Choice spilling long-lived
radiation poisoning around the Gulf region, and further. It would also be a Doomsday
Choice in any other country with large size reactors and extensive nuclear waste stores,
uranium fuel fabricating plants and other parts of "the fuel cycle", that got bombed - for any
reason at all.

Chernobyl 1986 is a key nuclear weapons proliferation date. It is at least as real as the
Manhattan Project and the bombing of Hiroshima in 1945 or Dr Abdul Qadr "Bombs R Us"
Khan's two screwdriver turn A-bomb on which he started work in 1975, and the US led
coalition's massive use of Depleted Uranium weapons in the Liberation of Kuwait, 1991.

To be sure, president Obama calls for nuclear disarmament and faster decommissioning of
Russian and US atom bombs but the hidden agenda, here, is the massive undersupply of
uranium for the world's reactor fleet. Decommissioning bombs releases atomic materials to
feed US civil nuclear reactors - which supposedly received about 45% of their total fuel
need from the "Megatons to Megawatts" source in 2009.

Taking bombs apart to get reactor fuel has a best-by date simply due to these sources of
reactor fuel being limited. When or if we ran out of bombs to take apart it will be even more
necessary to play with plutonium-generating Fast Breeder Reactors as a possible way out
of the uranium fuel supply garrot.

NUCLEAR RENAISSANCE

The 2010-2020 decade marks the world's "Nuclear Renaissance" according to triumphal
industry spokesmen. It may result in the construction of 200 - 250 new reactors, mostly in
the Emerging countries. The countries signing up to the New Nuclear Miracle, which
extends to its debt-linked financing, now range far and wide in the low and mid income
South. They include Bangladesh, Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam, Kazakhstan, Mongolia,
Sudan, Nigeria, Ghana, Algeria, Egypt, Jordan and plenty others.

Plutonium production and proliferation risks can only rise. More than 75 of these
Chernobyl-sized reactors would be built in 15 to 18, or more, low and mid-income
countries with absolutely no previous experience of the atom. Many of them are exposed
to civil war uprisings, are riven with religious and community conflicts, experience periodic
food shortages, have water supply and power infrastructure breakdowns and blackouts,
and have very troubled relations with their neighbours.

These countries, exactly like China and India, are however committing themselves to the
same gleaming high-tech Quick Fix nuclear solution to power shortages, to keep their
economies growing at record rates. This will vastly extend the Doomsday threat of large
reactors being treated as sitting duck military targets in regional conflicts. This is over and
apart from the risk of worst possible reactor accidents, such as the 1986 Chernobyl
disaster, and over and apart from nuclear waste and fuel enrichment security and pollution
threats generated by surging reactor numbers.

Nuclear power is sold using a Cornucopian Universal Prosperity and Titanic Power Myth,
but our main concern is simple: What happens when nuclear weapons proliferation
includes massive Dirty Bomb targets and the massive potential of simply and cheaply
turning nuclear wastes into deadly carcinogenic Depleted Uranium weapons ?
To be sure, the nuclear sales lobby claims nuclear energy faces no shortage of uranium, is
cheap and clean (low CO2), cuts oil dependence nearly to zero, improves energy security
despite all or most of the uranium being imported, is high-tech, prestigious and modern.
Above all, weapons proliferation is no risk - we have the NPT ! Even the risk of 'recycling'
nuclear wastes to make the Poor Man's nuclear ordnance - Depleted Uranium weapons -
is low or zero.

Like Obama, Sarkozy, Merkel and other leaders of the reactor building, uranium supplier,
and nuclear service selling countries, the Nuclear Lobby claims nuclear power is totally
separate and separable from weapons. It claims it is the quickest possible, most market
friendly, and cheapest Fast Track to generating more power.

Reality dashes all of these illusions and self delusions. It reveals the risks, the hazards, the
long-term costs, and the fragile "market friendly" reactor financing set-ups used by the socalled
financial community to sell the atom to countries ranging from Bangladesh to Sudan
and harnessing them with 50-year debts for their choice of hi-tech atomic trinkets.

Each new large-sized civil reactor is potentially a Chernobyl-type Dirty Bomb and each
year will generate enough plutonium (about 50 kilograms) to make 5 Hiroshima-type and
sized bombs, or 10 atom bombs of the same power using modern technology weapon
design. Bomb technology dates back 65 years, has seriously evolved in 65 years, and is
now almost ubiquitously available. Large sized reactors can also provide massive
quantities of nuclear waste for cheaply produced and deadly carcinogenic Depleted
Uranium weapons, recycling and value-adding to nuclear wastes, rather than face ever
rising long term disposal costs for these unwanted side-products of the "nuclear miracle".

Nuclear reactors are massive Dirty Bomb targets. Reactor materials can be used to make
atomic weapons. Nuclear waste can be quickly and cheaply used to make deadly
carcinogenic Depleted Uranium weapons. The world's plutonium repositories, which
contain hundreds of tons of plutonium extracted from civil reactors, are literal Doomsday
Weapons.

THE END OF THE NATION STATE

Due to this sombre context, national security as we know it and with any real meaning no
longer exists. Any country with large sized nuclear reactors is not defensible. Its has
already positioned Weapons of Mass Destruction - for the enemy side - inside its national
territory. When both belligerent nations have nuclear reactors, they have guaranteed and
massive Mutually Assured Destruction.

When we take account of the full risks of the coming worldwide nuclear boom, the
exploding number of civil reactor numbers, the full extent of fuel production and
reprocessing, accumulated nuclear wastes, plutonium production and storage, and the
spiralling amounts of 'new' nuclear waste being produced each day, the nation state itself
has no remaining signification or meaning. Its civil nuclear reactors are the "softest" and
easiest targets for conventional military attack - with guaranteed devastating sequels.

The nation state's "prerogative" of making war, for example in Afghanistan and Iraq is no
longer feasible or defensible - but is this known to politicians and the public ? Do they want
to know this ? What is the level of debate on this subject ?

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